Cooking 90 meals straight is no small task, so if you’re going to do it, you may as well squeeze every benefit out of the challenge that you can. These rules are here to help you do that. Without them, COOK90 could get too easy—you’d rely on the same old recipes, making (and eating) them over and over again. Instead, these guidelines force you to push yourself, expand your repertoire, find new recipes, learn new tricks, and ultimately become a better cook. Which, of course, is one of the reasons you’re doing this in the first place.
1. COOK EVERY BREAKFAST, LUNCH, AND DINNER IN A MONTH-LONG PERIOD
Delivery, takeout, microwaved frozen dinners, canned soup, energy bars, the lasagna your grandmother made for you—these don’t count as cooking. They are the distractions from cooking that COOK90 is designed to overcome.
2. NEVER COOK ANYTHING MORE THAN TWICE…
COOK90 is about rebooting your cooking life—and getting you out of your rut. The point is to learn new recipes, pick up new skills, and keep your daily cooking as diverse as possible. So the rice and beans you’ve been cooking three times a week for the past ten years? Make them once, make them twice, and then—forget them.
3. … EXCEPT FOR BREAKFAST
Breakfast is its own beast. You can eat the same thing every morning if you want to—but you still have to cook it. (And yes, that includes your coffee, too.)
4. RELY ON LEFTOVERS, BUT NOT TOO MUCH
Half the joy of making a killer chicken parm is eating it the next day for lunch (or, sometimes, at midnight the same day you cooked it). And since COOK90 is about taking advantage of all the benefits of cooking, as well as about fitting home-cooked food into a busy life, leftovers—and nextovers (more on that here)—fit right in.
But! Just as we don’t cook the same dish more than twice, we also don’t dip into leftovers more than twice. So take Sunday night’s leftovers to work for lunch on Monday. And go ahead, take them to work again on Tuesday. After that, move on and flex your muscles by cooking something new.
5. TAKE THREE BREAKS
This is crucial. You get three passes during COOK90—three meals to eat at a restaurant, have delivered, or let your girlfriend/husband/roommate/toddler cook for you. Don’t be a hero—use them! Use a pass when you have a wedding to attend or a business lunch you can’t get out of. Or use them when you feel stressed out, or are just plain dreading the thought of spending another night at the stove. COOK90 fatigue is real (see here). These passes will get you through it.
6. SHARE
Be loud about your cooking! Take photos of your dinners, tag them #COOK90, and share them with your friends, with strangers, and with me (@davidtamarkin). Doing this is half humblebrag, half accountability. The more people who know you’re taking the COOK90 challenge, the more motivated you’ll be to complete it. (Trust me, your aunt who spends too much time on Facebook will definitely notice if you skip a day—that woman notices everything.)